I say this as someone who enjoys teaching every step of the writing process, from distilling a jumble of ideas into a coherent thesis, to mastering and manipulating essay structure, to feeling the rhythm and flow of sentences, to chasing the perfect one. word or phrase. Learning all these things can be a problem for students. Helping them get through it is one of my favorite parts of the job.

But writing takes a lot of time to get good at, and time is the most precious resource in education. Longer writing assignments, such as essays or research papers, may no longer be their best use. In the workplace, it is becoming increasingly common for AI to write the first draft of any long-form document. More than half of professional workers used AI at work in 2023, according to a study, and of those who used AI, 68% used it to compose written content. Refining the AI ​​sketch—making sure it conveys what is intended—becomes the real work. From a business perspective, this is an efficient division of labor: humans come up with the question, AI answers it, and humans polish the AI ​​output.

In schools, the same process is called cheating.

The ethics of original scholarship is a pillar of education, making AI an uncomfortable fit in the classroom. But AI it is in the classroom, and teachers must teach students how to use it. The challenge is to simultaneously uphold the core value of academic integrity. The best way to do this may be to separate writing from scholarship.

Before putting words to paper, students must figure out what they want to say, which is a two-step process involving two fundamental, complementary skills. First comes analysis, literally tearing something apart to its simplest components—like a repairman taking apart a complicated mechanism. Whether students are studying a historical event, a poem, or a novel, the goal of analysis is to gain understanding.

Next comes synthesis, the creation of a new whole, through which students transform understanding into meaning and form opinions about what they have learned.

These two steps are where students carry out their thinking. Writing is secondary – just the tool to convey one’s ideas. But students often get so lost in trying to put their ideas into words that they lose sight of them themselves.

The most useful AI is meant to free us from mundane tasks. As much as it pains me to say it, writing is a mundane, even boring task for most students. AI can’t do all the writing for them; students still need to understand a topic well enough to know what they want to say about it. Even with artificial intelligence, a cloudy thesis makes for a cloudy essay. Garbage in, garbage out.

And just as AI users must do in the workplace, students must review AI outputs to ensure they accurately reflect their ideas. But AI can do what many students consider to be terrible work: grinding through the rules of structure, syntax, and organization to turn their ideas into coherent, if not entirely inspired, text. He gives them the gift of time.

For teachers, less time spent teaching the mechanics of writing means more time to spark students’ intellectual curiosity, expose them to a wider variety of ideas, or push them to do more research and refine their opinions. (AI can help with research, but good research isn’t about finding answers. It’s about the very human ability to ask the right questions.) Given time and space (and often, a gentle nudge), students can get a deeper understanding of whatever subject their teachers have suggested they pursue. Gradually, such activities will coalesce for students into something far more important than academic expertise: a clearer sense of what they believe to be true and important.

I became convinced that this is the purpose of teaching: to help students discover or develop their own beliefs. It is a rigorous process: they must first do the work to try to understand the complexities of their world and then reflect on what they have learned and change their views or habits accordingly. Analysis, reflection, synthesis, repetition — as lifelong practice. This is an original scholarship in its truest sense.

If all of this sounds starry-eyed or naive, so does thinking that students will continue to create traditional essays, starting with a blank page. The challenge in education will be to ensure that even if students use AI they communicate their ideas, the ideas represent their original thinking. This is a complicated issue to address, but it is the reality we face. The ability to put words on paper is becoming less and less important. Schools may no longer see the same value in teaching it.

And the sun will still rise in the morning.

Writing may disappear from the general curriculum, but it will not disappear completely. For some students—diarists, poets, storytellers, journalists, those who can’t hold back and turn in five single-spaced pages for a one-page assignment—writing will always be more than just a tool. They will create a larger space for it, claim it as a tool of self-expression and affinity; a way of seeing, feeling, shouting and whispering, to be heard by many or just one. For these few, it will remain vital, inextricable—writing for writing’s sake, its purpose known only to those consumed by the need to do it, its value beyond measure.

Schools may rightly conclude that writing is no longer an essential skill for most students. Let’s hope they recognize it and that for some it will remain an essential act.

Stephen Lane teaches history and economics at Concord-Carlisle High School. He is the author of “Long run to glory“, a book about the first women’s Olympic marathon and “No Sanctuary,” a history of grassroots efforts to provide in-school support for LGBTQ students. The ideas in this essay are my own and do not reflect the educational policy or practice of the Concord-Carlisle Regional School District.